[house]

Wow!

The amount of default correction is unbelievable!

I bet DPReview kicked up a storm about this.

Or perhaps they didn't...

Download a Leica Q2 sample and open it with RawTherapee - Home neutral settings and you're in for a treat...

Thing is though that the over all performance after digital corrections can be quite good. You can't do it with a dslr because the framing will be off. Still makes me wonder about that supposed mirrorless advantage for lens design due to register distance. So far all I can see is a whole lot of software corrections and that doesn't justify the pricing to me since those same corrections can be applied to vintage glass as well.

[ffking]

Technically, what your image shows is "Bokeh CA", not CA (in the technical sense of the latter term).

(Longitudinal) CA is defined as the chromatic aberration in the focus plane, i.e., it describes the level of colour fringing for objects in the focus plane caused by the failure of all colours to be focused on exactly the same plane. (Lateral CA is the failure to focus all colours with the same magnification, but we can ignore this type of aberration for now.)

The greenish and purplish discolouration we see on focus charts or on out of focus twigs is caused by colours not converging on out of focus objects. A good name for this particular aberration is "Bokeh CA" or rather "Toneh CA".

Interesting - thank you

[sundown]

24 in the future.

devastated, I hope you are wrong

[MMVIII]

A 24mm lens after the 21 comes to market seems like crowding at one end of the spectrum. Something 26 to 28 would perhaps fit nicer between the 21 and 31 primes.

But their ideas and my ideas seem to rarely coincide.

I don't think so. The wider you get the more every milimeter counts. I would have expected the classic 28, as it can be made fast without too much effort, but I think that 24 might be a good solution. Wide and fast for astro, still well corrected for architecture and sharp for landscape. With high sharpness you can always crop to 26...35... but the other way around it does not work

[normhead]

Given current lenses 24-70 and 28-105 in modern glass, there are two options for 28 already.
Of course that means nothing.

I definitely be more likely to buy a 24, but with the 21 coming first, I'm not sure it's even necessary.
There definitely should have been a 20-35 or 18-35 ƒ4 (or 3.5-4.5)zoom for folks like me.

[Rondec]

Download a Leica Q2 sample and open it with RawTherapee - Home neutral settings and you're in for a treat...

Thing is though that the over all performance after digital corrections can be quite good. You can't do it with a dslr because the framing will be off. Still makes me wonder about that supposed mirrorless advantage for lens design due to register distance. So far all I can see is a whole lot of software corrections and that doesn't justify the pricing to me since those same corrections can be applied to vintage glass as well.

Two things about digital corrections. First of all, they reduce the amount you can push a photo after they've been done -- the corners are noisier, maybe by a couple of stops, dynamic range not quite so good. The second thing is that they effectively crop a couple of mm off of an image. Not a big deal in many situations, but particularly on the wide end, can be a problem.

If you are going to be paying a thousand dollars for a 24-70 f4 lens (as the Nikon S is priced), you'd like it to perform a bit better without software manipulation, at least I would.

From a review standpoint, I do think it is important the review sites compare these lenses without any correction so that there is a level playing field. Typically Pentax lenses require clicking a button to get the lens correction on, it sounds as though with the Nikon Z they automatically do it in Lightroom.

[Serkevan]

Yes, Nikon and Sony embed metadata in their raw files so the raw converters automatically apply the lens correction profile before you can see how it looks like.

It's all good though: those are not Pentax-branded so it doesn't warrant a negative review.

[monochrome]

Didn't see anyone claim that a 24 would also be a Star (or Ltd) lens. Just the focal length was mentioned that I've seen on this specific example.

OoKU on the *85 page, discussing *35/1.4, said a *24 is coming (implied before the 35)

I'm fairly certain I'm not in need of a lecture on Ltd. vs Star and what the general design goals would be for those two families of lenses.


To Norm's point about web polls, I have doubts that folks voting on a web poll are steering product lineup that directly at Ricoh Imaging, but who knows. Maybe the thought is that a Ltd 21 and Ltd 31 sandwiching a Star 24 has that section of the focal length spectrum covered. A killer 24 seems nice although I fear how large/heavy it would be as a Star family member.

I guess I reference the FA*24/2 since they started the DFA*85 design with the A*85/1.4, per the Development video on the Special Site.

[house]

From a review standpoint, I do think it is important the review sites compare these lenses without any correction so that there is a level playing field. Typically Pentax lenses require clicking a button to get the lens correction on, it sounds as though with the Nikon Z they automatically do it in Lightroom.

Completely agree that reviewers need to at least show one 'raw' example. The good ones do. I'm also aware of the downsides to relying on software. I do think it makes sense for the engineers to take software into account when designing lenses these days. It allows for different trade offs. What it doesn't do is avoid trade offs like some reviewers seem to suggest. Mirrorless aint magic.

[pres589]

OoKU on the *85 page, discussing *35/1.4, said a *24 is coming (implied before the 35)

I guess I reference the FA*24/2 since they started the DFA*85 design with the A*85/1.4, per the Development video on the Special Site.

Too much volume to catch every post on every thread.


I'll be very surprised if a 24mm Star lens coming to market in 2021 shares much of its optical design with the FA*24 f2. For the right price you could probably recycle the A* 85's optical design in a modern housing and such but the FA 24? I have my doubts.

Norm, the more I think about it, the more I'm totally cool with a hotrod 24 from Pentax. I just probably won't want to carry the weight, deal with the size, or find the money for it...

[Rondec]

Completely agree that reviewers need to at least show one 'raw' example. The good ones do. I'm also aware of the downsides to relying on software. I do think it makes sense for the engineers to take software into account when designing lenses these days. It allows for different trade offs. What it doesn't do is avoid trade offs like some reviewers seem to suggest. Mirrorless aint magic.

I doubt most super zooms would be useable without software corrections. The same with a lot of cell phone images. But it does feel like a thousand dollar f4 zoom should be a bit better. The Pentax 24-70 f2.8, which is obviously based on the Tamron, is better than that for 100 more. Oh well, it's the wave of the future and I guess I just have to deal with it.

[repaap]

Too much volume to catch every post on every thread.


I'll be very surprised if a 24mm Star lens coming to market in 2021 shares much of its optical design with the FA*24 f2. For the right price you could probably recycle the A* 85's optical design in a modern housing and such but the FA 24? I have my doubts.

Norm, the more I think about it, the more I'm totally cool with a hotrod 24 from Pentax. I just probably won't want to carry the weight, deal with the size, or find the money for it...

Oh, but they did not recycle A*85, they did begin with FA*85, but did ditch that. And what followed. So. No one knows what the result is with 24. They obviously do take old * lenses as starting point, then view it through the competitors and make it better. Something wrong with that?

[monochrome]

Too much volume


I'll be very surprised if a 24mm Star lens coming to market in 2021 shares much of its optical design with the FA*24 f2. For the right price you could probably recycle the A* 85's optical design in a modern housing and such but the FA 24? I have my doubts.

Norm, the more I think about it, the more I'm totally cool with a hotrod 24 from Pentax. I just probably won't want to carry the weight, deal with the size, or find the money for it...

In the Development video they say they started with the FA*85 design, but they couldn’t make it work to the new standard. Then they looked at the designs of the best fast 85’s in the market (Zeiss?) and couldn’t make that work. So they did a clean-sheet design.

RE: FA*24/2 as a base - I gather they learned if they want the category-killer lenses they seem to want, they have to start from scratch.

[Ascencio]

24 in the future.

You have my attention.

[robbiec]

In the Development video they say they started with the FA*85 design, but they couldn’t make it work to the new standard. Then they looked at the designs of the best fast 85’s in the market (Zeiss?) and couldn’t make that work. So they did a clean-sheet design.

RE: FA*24/2 as a base - I gather they learned if they want the category-killer lenses they seem to want, they have to start from scratch.

Ref 85 they referenced an 85 with an 86mm front element as a benchmark which pointed me towards the Zeiss Otus.

Ref 24/2, that was / is regarded as the runt of the FA* litter? Seems to be a bit of a marmite lens, you either love it or hate it I went the Zeiss route and personally would prefer a 24 over 35 in DFA* format but I'll take either